An Anniversary

Still busy with school stuff, but I just wrote two thousand words on juvenile waiver laws (and before that did a linear regression by hand) and can use a break to write about an event that happened this day that changed the world as we know it.

Fifty years ago on this date, Yuri Gagarin would become the first man in space. The Soviet Union had already won the race to put an artificial satellite into orbit with Sputnik I, a tiny beeping ball that absolutely terrified the United States of America. Yet on April 12, 1961 the Vostok spacecraft would take the first human being beyond the confines of our world, and things would change forever.

I'm not being melodramatic about that. Yuri Gagarin's 108 minute trip from launch to landing, one orbit around our planet was enough to kick the United States into gear about the need to reach the moon first or forever lose to their rivals. In the process of this great space race the very foundations of our modern technological base were laid out. The miniaturization of computer components for instance; if you're using a laptop right now, you can thank the space race because things had to get smaller and smaller.

Perhaps more importantly, it inspired generations of artists, writers, and scientists. It gave hope and life to the imagination of countless people as they began to realize that there was a wide open universe outside their own little world. For me, space truly represents the wonders of God's creation.